So, I set a goal for myself: 10,000 Instagram followers by August 2022.

That seemed like a huge amount at the time, so when I hit my goal, I was elated.

I set goals for myself constantly, in every part of my life, because that way I have something I am working toward. Once I reach them, I push back the goalposts!

Cut to October 2026, and I have more than one million followers across Instagram and Facebook alone.

It was not a straight line. There were many ebbs and flows. In fact, I sat at 100,000 for a full year, and at one point I was losing followers rather than gaining any. But more recently, I have been pretty nose-to-the-grindstone serious about honing my content and leveraging every tool available to ensure my success.

Instagram is extremely limited in how far back they let you look at your analytics, but I have charted my following sporadically over the years, so I asked Claude to create this loose chart of how my following has grown since September 2019, when I had 3,807 followers. I began really focusing on my following five years ago, but the biggest jumps for me happened in the last three years.

My growth on Instagram wasn’t because I hired a consultant or social media manager (I currently manage all my own content and brand deals), bought followers, or paid for ads. It was the result of doing lots of research and constantly analyzing my own analytics.

A big part of my growth happened in the last year, when a series of Reels netted me tens of thousands of followers each. Were those Reels viral? Not necessarily. They were valuable.

And here’s the thing I really want to nail down because I think this is the biggest misconception about social media in 2026:

Going viral won't lead to more followers.

I’m going to get into what actually moved the needle for me, along with:

• the exact posts that brought in 20,000+ followers apiece

• the type of content that doesn’t perform for me

• what a million followers actually turned into for me, in terms of brand deals and monetization

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Thanks for all the love on Wednesday’s post. Grief comes in waves, and it never gets easier to lose someone you love, but you learn to live with the gap they left behind. It’s nice having a source of support in all of you.

This week, I’m rounding up some household items I am always reordering (boring, maybe, but I am all for sharing affordable finds, even when they aren’t vintage!); my more splurgey vintage saves; and some things I wore recently.

xx,

VC

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Splurgey Vintage Finds

I am always adding to my 1stDibs faves because it’s easy to spend an hour there, saving things I love or hope to find one day out in the wild. Here are a handful of recent loves.

• velvet chairs

• sequined evening bag

• Louise Bourgeois for MOMA coffee cup and saucer

• 1982 palm tree poster

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I just placed a big order on Grove that I thought was worth sharing because they have such a wide range of eco-friendly, non-toxic household goods that are very affordable (most of what I buy is under $10, and a lot is under $5). These are my monthly go-tos:

• recycled plastic trash bags, $6.79

• hand soap, $3.99

• shower cleaner, $5.49

• 2-ply bamboo paper towels, 12 jumbo size for $29.99

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Things I Wore

I need to do a better job of sharing outfits here! I love getting dressed and almost always have something vintage on, but I also like mixing my secondhand finds with new stuff.

• leather jacket, thrifted flower brooch, estate sale fetish necklace (I got this necklace so long ago I probably paid $10 for it and you could never find one at that price now)

• raglan tee, camo pants

• sneakers, socks (these are wool & cashmere, $18, and buy three, get three free)

• velvet mary jane flats (incredibly comfortable!); vintage Jean Paul Gaultier skirt

Share What's Left

Etc.

• Midi Health supplements continue to be absolute reorders for me. The Berberine and Omegas came recommended by my primary care physician and I have been taking them for over a year. I am convinced they are the reason for my hair growth and why my metabolism stays in check as I age.

• I recently stocked up on cozies for the forthcoming cold season. When I’m working remotely, this waffle knit pant and mock-neck top will be just the thing to take me from home desk to errands after.

• These all-natural energy drinks have been my new afternoon pick-me-up to replace a 2 PM iced coffee. They contain all sorts of good-for-you ingredients, but I’m primarily after the guayusa caffeine (which offers energy without the jitters of a cold brew).

PS. Last week, I shared a 1970s hand belt that someone snapped up very quickly. Good news: I found two more! Bad news: they are both pretty pricey (one is really expensive):

at left, $375 // at right: $1,703

I also found this $200 hand belt buckle and it is taking everything in my power not to buy it myself because it looks like my own hand:

And then there’s this vintage $425 Whiting and Davis number which is just…wowza:

Some links in this post may be affiliate links, meaning I may earn a small commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you.

It’s always the most unremarkable scenario — we go to a Japanese restaurant and sit down, only to realize the place serves ramen, not sushi, and we both roll our eyes at our absolute lack of awareness. “Who wants ramen when it’s 100 degrees out?” she says, and we order some anyway.

In dreams, there’s no surprise at her presence. No shock or sadness.

She’s just… there. Like she never left.

My grandmother, Joy, died seven years ago today. October 14, 2019 — the day the earth came off its axis for me.

When I speak at events, I often imagine what it would be like to see her sitting in the audience. I can picture her waiting for me afterward, so we could catch up, and I think about what I might say to bring her up to speed on the last seven years.

So much has happened — both in the world and to me.

“There was a pandemic, and we all had to stay home for months. We watched our friends and neighbors die, and businesses shutter, and we had to go to the grocery store in shifts and stand six feet apart. I taught Mom how to wash her hands the right way and I could hear her singing the Happy Birthday song every time the water ran.”

“Technology has moved at a rapid pace. Some cars drive themselves now, and when I check out at the grocery store, I don’t even take out my credit card. I just scan my palm. I talk to a computer to turn on and off the lights at home and I talk to it by name, because computers are now taking the place of humans. It’s incredibly convenient and everyone is pretty scared about it, too.”

“I got a job at People Magazine. I interviewed countless movie stars. I went to the White House Christmas Party twice. I went to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and, if you were watching C-SPAN, you’d have seen me walk the red carpet, then check my phone because I got a text from Mom: ‘I see you on C-SPAN.’”

“I wrote a book and it changed my life. I traveled the country talking about it, and I even went on NBC News. A driver picked me up and took me to 30 Rock, and I peeked my head in to where Saturday Night Live is filmed. I got a literary agent, and a second book deal, and fancy Hollywood people asked me if I ever thought about doing television. Companies pay me money now just to talk about them on social media and brands send me clothing and skincare and lingerie and all the sorts of things I used to whine for as a kid.”

Mostly, though, I think I’d tell her: “Jazzy is still alive.”

Jazzy is my mom’s 17-year-old peekapoo. She is deaf and therefore has no idea how loud she is. She uses the bathroom quite frequently inside, and never in a normal way, somehow going from room to room to ensure no floor is left untouched. She has no teeth and a heart murmur, has cost me thousands in veterinary bills, and despite it all, still manages to test the limits of a dog’s lifespan.

My grandmother would laugh at that.

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I love writing about my grandmother, but god, do I hate calling her “my grandmother.” Inevitably, I get hit with, “Oh I was so close to my grandmother, too,” or “Our grandparents are such blessings!” and I don’t mean to be an absolute jackass but she was not my grandmother.

She was my mom and my dad and my sister and my best friend. The love of my life. There are no words to describe what she was to me, or maybe there are, but I haven’t learned them yet.

My grandmother was 40 years old when she started raising me, after my mom was shot in the head by her estranged husband. My grandmother watched it happen, scooped me from the car while my mom nearly bled out, and ran to the nearest house to call 911.

My mom was 20, by the way, so just let that sink in: A 40-year-old watching her 20-year-old get shot in the face and having to summon the ability to function — to pick up a six-week-old baby, remember to use her legs to propel her to a telephone, pick up and dial said telephone, and then call for an ambulance.

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My grandmother did not birth me, but she was my mother just the same. More so, I think, because we were bound together not umbilical-cord-to-womb but by The Horrors that we survived.

The difference, of course, is that I don’t remember a single second of it and she probably wished she could say the same.

A brief aside, in case you need some background: My father went to prison for shooting my mother. He served seven years, then cycled in and out more than a dozen times after that. I never knew him, saw him, or heard from him until 2024, when he started messaging my mother on Facebook.

And that would be another thing I’d have to fill my grandmother in on: That 40 years after he shot my mom, he came back into our lives in the most tragic way.

Weeks after he began messaging my mom on Facebook and getting no response, he was arrested for stabbing a woman he’d been dating. She had broken up with him, so he went to her workplace and stabbed her, nearly severing an artery and, as she lay bleeding on the floor, walked next door to a grocery store and tried to change his appearance before an off-duty police officer responded to the call and went to arrest him. That’s when he stabbed himself. He survived and was sent to prison.

A year after that, I finally saw him — shackled, in a courtroom, while I stood in front of him, testifying before a judge about why he should spend the rest of his life in prison. He got the maximum sentence and will likely die an incarcerated man, but even that has not stopped him — a few months ago, I started getting unhinged comments on Facebook from a burner account. It didn’t take long to realize who it was.

Testifying at my dad’s trial at age 40 was very full-circle, in that my grandmother had been 40 when he shot my mom. It’s almost funny, isn’t it, the coincidences that make up our lives?

My grandmother’s life was marked by unspeakable tragedy.

It is a nightmare to lose a child. But less spoken of is when you lose the child you knew and inherit a new one. My grandmother got both me and the new version of my mom after the shooting.

She rarely spoke about the shooting (growing up, we called it “the accident,” and I’m not sure why) but she worked very hard to shield me from anything bad — in a gated community, in a room with no windows and with panic buttons on the wall, just in case.

I always felt some small burden of guilt, knowing that I was the only one who escaped the shooting intact (indeed, I was probably better because of it — without it, I would not have been raised by my grandmother and could have been killed by him myself).

I got out alive and never really knew pain. Until, of course, October 14, 2019.

I have written at length about my grandmother’s death and the details are no less painful all these years later.

It was a car accident, and the police officer who arrived on the scene told me she seemed fine at first until she started complaining of chest pains. They took her by ambulance to a nearby hospital; then, when they realized the situation was much more dire, they life-flighted her to a trauma center. I got the call and drove so fast I arrived before the helicopter had even touched down.

Once inside, I was taken to a tiny room where the chaplain told me she was incoherent. The fact that it was a chaplain speaking to me first told me all I needed to know, but it didn’t make it any easier when the surgeon walked in and shut the door behind him.

When I finally saw her that night, they had already attempted resuscitation. The nurses had created a shroud around her face and body, but I could still see bruising on her chest and blood on her lips. She would have hated it, people seeing her like that, but she was always the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Even now, I wouldn’t give that moment up for anything, despite it being the most intense pain I’ve ever felt in my life.

The year after her death was the most challenging of my life. My mom moved in, the pandemic happened. I took on as much work as I could physically handle to ensure I had enough money to take care of us both. I was, I am sure, very, very depressed.

My clothes got baggy and my eyes looked hollow and my hair started turning gray.

I threw myself into work, pitching a book and then writing it over the course of a year. “For Joy, forever,” I wrote on the dedication page.

Fall turned to winter, and my grandmother haunted me, with calls of “Joy to the World” blaring out of every big-box store’s overhead speakers.

I drove down I-95 and almost careened off the road at the sight of the billboard for the religious radio station. “Joy FM,” it proclaimed, in the most cheerful bubble font imaginable.

Where’s the Joy in that? I thought to myself, and then laughed out loud.

I do that, actually. Laugh when I should be crying.

I think that’s why the word “hysterical” is often used to describe both — because laughing and crying are so inextricably intertwined. One begets the other. You can do both hysterically, maniacally.

Recently, I got a message here on Substack, offering appreciation for my earlier essays on my family life:

I really appreciate you sharing the story often and without embellishment because the horror speaks for itself. If you were up for it, and I totally would understand if you are not, I would love to know more about how you accept or make peace with this on a daily basis and what the struggle looks like on the hard days where maybe you feel like this is so unfair and you’re just angry. This is wisdom I and I’m sure many others need right now.

How do I make peace on a daily basis?

I’ve mulled this over in my mind for weeks now and I’m not sure I have found peace in anything so much as I have found acceptance.

I have accepted that this is my life. That my mom is like my child, and my grandmother was like my mom, and my dad is just some sad, pitiful man on the outer fringes of my life — a man who only pops in to wreak havoc.

I’ve accepted that even seven years later, everything I do is for an audience of one: her.

I have accepted that Jazzy will likely outlive us all.

It would all be so damn tragic if I didn’t find it pretty damn funny, too. After all, who among us gets to view this stunning Joe Exotic moment and immediately think of their dad? Me, that’s who.

I have a dry and fairly dark sense of humor. I can be macabre at times.

I have enough self-awareness to realize it’s a defense mechanism — to know that, when someone asks about my dad or my mom and I crack a joke, I am doing what I can to shift the focus. Look over there, I am saying, through a smile of gritted teeth and eyes turning glassy with tears.

I’ve learned you can be devastating and funny, just not in the same breath. The jokes don’t always land when the jokes are at your own expense.

But it’s a psychological paradox, isn’t it? Some of the most hilarious people you’ll ever meet are also the most tragic. It seems the painted smiles of a sad clown almost always mask deep inner sorrow.

So, sure: I’ve made peace with my life. Or maybe I’ve just learned to laugh about it.

For the first few years after my grandmother died, I viewed stress like a tsunami that I could outrun if I just pumped my legs hard enough. It was magical thinking, of course — that I could be so good, so talented, so successful that maybe The Horrors wouldn’t completely engulf me.

But the hits just kept on coming; you can never outrun The Horrors.

I allowed myself to cry, of course. I cried in the shower, in the car, at my desk at work. I would cry in my sleep.

But for months, I stifled my laughter. I believed happiness was something reserved for those of us who did not know loss. In the grips of my grief, I was convinced that nothing would ever be funny again.

But The Horrors persist, and with time and distance, I’ve learned it’s actually all kind of funny in a dark and absurd and unbelievable sort of way.

Had you told me on October 13, 2019, that my grandmother would die the next day — and I’d survive it — I would not have believed you.

Had you told me two years ago that my dad would stab another woman nearly to death and I would be the one to testify to a judge that he should never get out of prison, while standing right in front of the man himself, I would have scoffed in your face.

Had you told me five years ago I’d be writing my second book and sharing my love of thrifting, antiques, and vintage with over a million people across social media platforms, the same way I used to talk to her?

That I would get daily messages from perfect strangers saying things like, “Look at this chair I found — it is so you,” and they’d be right, because somehow they knew me?

That I’d pass that Joy FM billboard one day and smile because I would know, down to the deepest part of my bones, that she is so proud of me?

I would have laughed. Hysterically.

So hard I might cry, probably.

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If this meant something to you, paid subscribers keep this newsletter going. I appreciate all the support.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES:

I use affiliate links in these (obviously, this is a …

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This time last year I was in Michigan, for a family wedding. It was the perfect long weekend, made all the better thanks to a view of the Great Lakes every morning.

If you’ve never been to the Great Lakes, they are really special and bear a striking resemblance to California. The water is icy cold, which makes for a bracing wake-up call if you take a morning dip, but also clear and smooth — so unlike the dark and murky Atlantic Ocean I grew up with.

We landed in nearby Grand Rapids, which is home to wonderful architecture (like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Meyer May House) and the absolutely astounding Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park.

Whenever I feel stifled creatively, travel gets me out of my rut. Even looking back at photos of past trips helps! Travel is one of the best ways to reframe our minds and gain inspiration. We move physically outside the box we are most used to and get the chance to see the world through someone else’s eyes.

This week, I’m trying to lean into inspiration. I’ll be using the long weekend as an excuse to spend a day thrifting with my mom (and, if you’re my publisher and you’re reading this, finish edits on my manuscript!)

I hope you all find some inspiration this weekend, too.

xx,

VC

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A New Rabbit Hole to Dive Down

I came upon the above vintage Carlisle belt at a local Goodwill (the buckle struck me and when I turned it over, I saw that the buckle itself was signed by an artist!) Apparently Karen Callan made, among other things, belt buckles for the brand and signed them all. I love that little detail and it has led me down a rabbit hole for Karen Callan designs, which are wonderful! Also: incredibly inexpensive; here are some faves:

• red croc embossed clutch with alligator charm, $23

• lime green turtle clutch, $18

• gecko belt, $50

• red painted lips, $25

blue toile jacket, $26 // black toile jacket, $55

Hunt For This: Coldwater Creek toile jackets.

These jackets feel very now. (Imagine them buttoned up, with a great pair of jeans and flats; maybe a denim button-up underneath?)

Sunday’s Deep Dive: This Sunday, I’m rounding up my under-$100 finds for the month of October. These are free to read but the items go so, so fast. I urge you to subscribe to get first dibs.

Also coming later this month: a huge guide to everything I know about buying and reselling vintage. More soon.

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In My Cart/Recently Purchased:

• I did not know Cynthia Rowley had a line for Pottery Barn! This vase is so cute (and on sale).

• I just ordered these onyx donut hoops from my favorite jewelry line and cannot wait for them to arrive. VIRGINIA15 gets you 15% off anything on the site

• I also ordered this rugby polo sweatshirt, which I’ve been wearing nonstop around the house. It is incredibly warm (would be great for a really cold climate) and cuddly. It is on sale for $35, which is a great deal.

• I am late to the party on the Jones Road Miracle Balm but I am a convert. Love the consistency, the natural flush it gives your skin…and it goes on like a dream and is super buildable.

Reader Find of the Week

A reader shared this recent op-shop (Aussie speak for thrift shop) find in the subscriber chat: a Maitland-Smith armoire. WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT HARDWARE!!! If you have something you want to share (like an item you’re not sure you should buy), drop it into the chat! Everyone is kind, and I love seeing what you all find.

From the Archives:

It’s hideous and I love it.

Had I encountered this hutch inside the log cabin it no doubt came out of, I might have dismissed it as too theme-y — or as something belonging to that particular strain of rustic decor that includes lots of bears holding signs.

But here, surrounded by worn-in brass, pottery, and a beautiful knobby lamp, I saw it differently. It wasn’t so much giving “cabin décor” as it was giving English country house by way of upstate New York.

And in the interest of sending you down one of my favorite kinds of rabbit holes, I thought it high time we discuss this oft-overlooked category of things to search for.

Enter: vintage Adirondack furniture.

No, not this kind of Adirondack furniture:

Most people hear “Adirondack furniture” and picture the above, very familiar outdoor chair; you probably had a plastic version in college. This is actually a descendant of a much broader rustic design tradition that has its roots in The Great Camps.

Now, for the “extremely rich people go camping” portion of our program.

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For part three of this series of under-the-radar clothing brands, we’re delving into elaborately embellished sweaters and beautifully tailored designer clothing. There are pieces here for the person who wants to look quietly luxurious and the person who wants a small beaded garden growing across their torso. I support both!

As always, knowing the label is only part of the deal of secondhand shopping. Look at the fabric, the construction, the condition — and whether you actually want to wear the thing.

Happy shopping!

For more of my favorite under-the-radar brands to thrift, head here.

xx,

VC

THE BRAND: Koos Van Den Akker

silk midi colorblock dress, $88

Why It’s Worth Thrifting:

If you love Dries Van Noten, you’ll love Koos van den Akker. Both brands are expert-level pattern mixers, pairing things you would think would not make sense, like florals and plaids, or leopard and stripes.

1980s coat, $700

What’s more — one inspired the other! Dries van Noten often cited Koos as an inspiration. The Dutch-born Koos also inspired other big-name designers like Nicolas Ghesquière. So there’s an argument to be made that many of our favorite brands today might not even exist were it not for the brilliance of Koos.

Koos van den Akker patterned jacket, $325 vs Dries van Noten patterned trench, $1,825

A little about the history here, because Koos had a serious design pedigree and worked as an apprentice at Christian Dior before launching his own label. His KOOS-brand collage-style sweaters became wildly popular in the 1980s, when Bill Cosby famously wore them on The Cosby Show. But of course, he went on to be known for other garments, as well — like all the dresses and jackets shown here.

mixed-print dress, $225

What to Look For:

• Jackets and coats combining several fabrics

• Patchwork skirts and dresses

• Contrasting borders, bands, and panels

• Unexpected combinations of print and texture

• Carefully finished seams where different fabrics meet

two-piece, prairie-style set, $192

Search Terms:

• “Koos van den Akker vintage”

• “Koos van den Akker patchwork jacket”

• “Koos van den Akker collage”

• “Koos vintage coat”

• “Koos van den Akker skirt”

Try the full name first, then broaden to “Koos” to catch listings with shorter descriptions.

The really good stuff is below the paywall (including an incredible early 2000s brand that goes for $$$ online but is often hiding in the intimates section at the thrift store and one of my all-time fave novelty sweater brands, with a bunch of under-$100 options).

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In case you missed it, I’ve updated my year-long calendar of the biggest and best yard sales and flea markets worth traveling for. This is a good guide to bookmark, as the events take place all across the U.S.

Today, I’m rounding up some recent outfits that involve thrift finds, to show you how I style vintage with modern. On Sunday, I’m releasing my third in a series of under-the-radar clothing brands worth thrifting, so be sure to keep an eye out.

And on the subject of clothes…. have you guys tuned into any eBay live streams? There are pretty major brands on there. Like today at noon, there’s a sale of current-season, direct-from-the-brand Anine Bing clothing (some of it has light damage, but it’s priced accordingly, so you could get it majorly discounted). The same seller has another Anine Bing sale on October. 16; might be worth a look-see.

PS. I’ve got a big box of goodies going out to a paid subscriber this month! I send gifts to a paid sub selected at random every month (and Collector’s Circle members get a big box of my favorite things, plus a signed copy of Big Thrift Energy, btw).

xx,

VC

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Here are some recent outfits utilizing vintage and thrifted finds:

• Emily Dawn Long “Take Off Your Clothes” tee; vintage squash blossom necklace (belonged to my grandmother); vintage Jean Paul Gaultier skirt

• vintage “Lichenstein’s Cat” tee (try as I might, I cannot find this anywhere except for a website that is in Japanese; I got mine for $25 at an antique gallery); washable silk pants; platform flip-flops; bucket bag with bag charms; paracord necklace; beaded necklace

• vintage Vera pajama robe (antique mall find, came with the matching nightie which I wear as a dress), thrifted flower brooch, old Louis Vuitton bag, washable silk pants, nude flip-flops

• vintage Phoebe Philo-era Celine dress (it’s on The RealReal for under $75!!), Attico flip-flops (purchased on The RealReal), The Row bag

• red button-up; thrifted hot pink skirt (I will share details of this brand in a future letter it is very very niche and incredible), thrifted belt (came as part of a lingerie robe), Gianvito Rossi heels

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When it comes to styling vintage and modern, I have a few workhorses:

• a good t-shirt bra

• pair of silky pants (these are very affordable and more importantly: washable, no dry cleaning necessary)

• great sneakers that go with everything

• an undershirt that ensures sweat doesn’t get on my nice vintage things

If I’m going out for the evening, I use this body wash. The scent lingers, so you can use it in lieu of perfume and it is outstanding.

I recently shared my favorite vintage horse head belts on Instagram and almost all of them sold out within minutes so I’m sharing this one here first. It’s on the expensive side at $245 but still less than a third the cost of the viral Chloe horse belt and it’s by Judith Lieber.

If you collect matchbooks, this keepsake frame is a great idea.

A very fun vintage concha belt priced at $35.

And I’ll leave you with some sneak peeks behind-the-scenes of book two!

I recently shared my tips for shopping secondhand art in person — where to find a signature, how to determine more about a piece, how to distinguish between a poster and a print, that kind of thing. But what about shopping online? What should you search to even find the good stuff to begin with?

As I’ve been finishing up edits on book two (2027 babes, don’t worry, it’s coming!), I’ve been thinking a lot about the language around secondhand. There are so many words that are very insider-y (“patina,” “folk art,” “outsider art,” etc.) and I want to break them down for you as best I can.

Some of those are great words to search when you’re looking for art on Facebook Marketplace and Etsy, but the thing is: most of them will turn up results from people who know their stuff. “Outsider art,” for instance, is just a fancy way of saying the art was made by someone who is untrained, but a non-vintage dealer probably wouldn’t list it that way on Marketplace. They would just write, “old painting.”

So here, I’ve defined all of my own go-to terms (and offered examples!), but also rounded up the broader words that might turn up good stuff from people who don’t know what they have (or just want to get rid of things quickly).

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1. Outsider Art

What it means: “Outsider” or “folk” art typically refers to that by artists who are self-taught (i.e. not professionally trained), but some of it also has a very specific “look.” A lot of folk art, for instance, contains biblical imagery and has a sort of primitive quality to it (“primitive” is another word used a lot in the world of antiques, it just means basic or unrefined).

Keywords to try:

• Vintage naïve portrait

• Folk art portrait painting

• Primitive portrait painting

• Self-taught artist portrait

• Outsider art

folk art Dalmatian // Swedish folk art piggy bank // Mose Tolliver painting

This post is for paid subscribers. Paid subscribers get my best finds, field reports, sourcing intelligence, market observations, deeply researched guides and the stories/opinions I don’t put on social media.

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This has been a loooong week for me. So long, in fact, that I’ll likely write about it at some point. For now, I am exhausted, depleted, and grateful to have an incredible support system.

It’s a grab bag this week, so plz enjoy.

And thank you for the kind words on Wednesday’s essay. It means the world.

xx,

VC

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I spent last weekend in Savannah, celebrating a friend’s birthday and generally having too much fun. We stayed at Hotel Bardo and it was lovely but I am 99% sure it was haunted (my lights came on at 4 AM the first morning and I was completely alone). I am really anxious to stay at Bardo’s new sister property, Recess, which opened the day we left.

While in Savannah, I had to stop by my favorite place: Bazaar by SCAD. This is a perfect boutique featuring designs by SCAD students and alums. It is so, so special. I snagged a couple things, including the above Emily Dawn Long sweater (it’s backlesssss but also reversible).

When I travel, I always pack a sleep aid. I have used Ritual’s melatonin for years, but they have a new perimenopause supplement that is also amazing.

Another thing I always bring with: sunscreen. Hotels often have it but it’s generally the really weird zinc that makes you look like Casper the ghost. I love love love this one, which is under $25, goes on like whipped cream (so fun!) and has tiny specks of sparkles in it, so you glow (other people actually noticed and kept commenting on my skin).

I have gotten some questions about my makeup lately, so I rounded it all up here. It’s really all about this highlighter, to be honest, which I put on the bridge of my nose, the cupid’s bow of my lips, and on my cheeks.

Some vintage I saw and loved (and bought!) in Savannah:

• 1990s blazer

• taffeta evening gown

• mod/psychedelic maxi

• Jean Paul Gaultier skirt

I am in love with these tables and they are exactly the kind of thing I would thrift.

Another thing I love: this Italian art glass necklace! It’s under $200.

Other random things I’m really into at the moment:

• This perfect vase.

• This vintage Paco Rabanne set.

• This sculptural whale dish.

• This whopping green beryl ring.

He was on trial for attempted murder, after stabbing an ex-girlfriend nearly to death at her workplace. The stabbing came 40 years after he shot my mom in the head with me (then six weeks old) in the car next to her.

Looking back now feels like watching a movie. I remember throwing up, and not being able to eat. I remember trying very hard not to cry, but crying anyway.

And I remember all that came after — how his relatives (mine too, I guess) wrote me hateful messages on Facebook. How he himself continues to write me through a burner account that he has somehow managed to access in prison (proof that men like him are incapable of change, motivated by ego and pride and wholly without any self-awareness or moral compass).

I wrote this essay prior to the hearing and thought it worth sharing now. I’ve included an addendum, so you can read what I told the judge. He referenced my statement in handing down the maximum sentence of 30 years, making it the most important thing I’ve ever written.

Thanks for all your support.

xx,

VC

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One night when I was 13 years old, a face appeared at my bathroom window. I was getting ready for bed when I saw it: a round, moon-like thing that popped up from the darkness, illuminated in the glow of the house, features masked by the undulations in the glass block windows. 

At first, I thought I was imagining it, until the face moved. I don’t remember ever being so scared as I was in that moment, slowly turning to glide past the face in the window, walking out of the bathroom and into the living room, where my grandmother was watching television.

“There’s someone at the window,” I said, to which she replied, “Of course there’s not, you’re being dramatic,” then made a big production out of dragging her legs over the edge of the couch, standing up, and walking into the bathroom to show me just how dramatic I was.

“See? There’s no one there,” she said gesturing to the now-empty window. She had opened her mouth to tell me I was seeing things when, just like that, the face popped up again.

“Go in your room. And lock the door,” she told me.

The police officer that came over later found nothing other than a footprint outside, though he mentioned a neighborhood boy had been caught doing this kind of thing in the recent past.

Looking back, it probably was just some boy, which doesn’t really make it less creepy but does mean that it wasn’t the one person my grandmother no doubt thought it was: my dad.

My dad was, for most of my life, merely a concept. He shot my mom when I was two months old, weeks after she left him and obtained a restraining order. He planned it out ahead of time, walking into a gun store with a friend to obtain the weapon, hiding in some brush in a parking lot near my grandmother’s house. He watched us pull out of her driveway, then he shot at the car — at my mom, and me, and my grandmother — twice. He struck my mom in the head on his second try. Following weeks in a coma and intensive care, she survived.

He was charged with aggravated assault which, in Georgia, can sometimes be used in lieu of attempted murder. The legal distinction lies in the intent and the nature of the act — aggravated assault typically involves causing serious bodily harm with a deadly weapon; attempted murder requires a specific intent to kill.

He was sentenced to two counts: aggravated assault, which came with a sentence of 10 years, and aggravated battery, which came with 20 years.

He got out in six.

I imagine my grandmother was notified when he was released in 1991 and, while she never outwardly let on that she was fearful, there were certainly signs.

Following my mom’s rehabilitation in a trauma center, the three of us moved to Florida, where my grandmother bought a piece of land in a gated community and drew up plans for a four-bedroom house. One of the bedrooms was built for me and it had no windows and a row of panic buttons installed in the wall. There was one button to call the paramedics, one to call the fire department, and one to call the police.

I never thought much of the buttons, other than that they must be in every home. And I never thought much of the lack of windows until I had slumber parties and everyone slept til noon (without natural light, you never know what time it is).

It was in the home with my windowless bedroom that the face at my bathroom window appeared. And while there was a brief glimmer of “was it him? did he find us?” it was exceedingly rare for me to ever even think about my father. I was never hamstrung by my fears of him, because he never felt real to me.

My grandmother took precautions, doctoring many of my school records so that I could go by her last name — Hollingsworth — and a shortened version of my first name — Ginny.

I was Ginny Hollingsworth until I was 18 years old, when I began going by what was always my real name, Virginia Chamlee, but what many assumed was some new identity I came up with on a whim.

I was Virginia Chamlee when social media and search engines became the de facto research method. That was when I first Googled him, out of boredom on a random Saturday afternoon.

A few clicks of a keyword and there he was — in a mugshot, staring blankly at the camera beneath fluorescent lights.

There was no pang of recognition. No “we share the same eyes,” or, “look — that dimple’s just like mine.” Just a mugshot of a rather unattractive man. The kind who looked like he would leer at me in a gas station.

And there, below the photo, was his incarceration history.

One would think that getting away with attempted murder might make you reformed — or, at least, appreciative enough of your freedom that you don’t take it for granted.

Not so, in the case of my father, whose resume included time served in 1980, 1982, 1985, 1994….

In fact, when I saw his photo for the first time, I noted that he was just about one year in to serving a 30-year sentence for trafficking amphetamine.

I made a mental note and took comfort in knowing that he’d probably never be free.

At that point, my grandmother had sold her house with the windowless room. No doubt the new owners had already broken through the plaster to let the light in.

I lived the first part of my adult life not thinking about my dad at all, really. I worked, I launched a successful vintage business, I traveled. Then my grandmother died in a car accident and I became the primary caretaker for my mom.

I started thinking about him a little more then, in the kind of way you might think of someone who threw a grenade into a room and left you to pick up the shrapnel.

Of course as I grew older, so did he, and so did technology, evolving to the point that it’s now much easier to find people — even to message them. Even if they don’t want you to.

Before my grandmother’s death, she had me set up a Facebook page for her furniture store — one that I rarely looked at, but still got notifications for, even five years after her death.

The first time I saw my dad had left a comment on the store’s page was in September 2024. “Beautiful furniture,” he wrote. “Reminds me of a girl I once knew.”

To a stranger on the internet, it would be innocuous but to me, it was a punch in the gut. It meant he was out.

The comments on the store’s page continued for a couple of weeks before I had the thought to check my mom’s personal Facebook page. Due to her injuries, she doesn’t often share photos of herself online. Her profile photo was, instead, the logo for my grandmother’s store, which meant he must have thought the store was hers. I deduced that the comments on the store’s Facebook page were a way to get my mom’s attention. My fears were confirmed when I checked her personal “message requests” — this purgatory-like folder that keeps notes sent by strangers in limbo, so you never actually see them unless you go looking.

He had written her dozens, spanning weeks.

“Are you secretly happy and excited to hear from me?”

“I really believe you have loved me since 1983.”

“Send me pictures.”

“Where does our beautiful child get her writing from? Or that high powered drive inside?”

“I love you. Hope you both are perfect. Give her an extra hug but don’t tell her it’s from me.”

“You moved on … I can’t and honestly I have no desire or intent to.”

So consumed was I by the thought that I somehow lucked out and escaped my father that I was shocked when I didn’t. There were no windows, but he still got in.

Some of his messages were crude, sexual, disgusting. In others, he detailed the shooting, moment by moment. In one, he said he was urging his friends to buy my book. In many, he swore he was sorry, swore he was changed.

Weeks later, he would try to kill another woman.

This is the part of the story that becomes almost self-referential. It’s an essay about an essay or, at least, what happened after I published one.

We never hit “accept” on the messages, and we certainly never responded, instead taking time to determine what to do next.

But on a Wednesday in October, I hit send on an essay here on Substack. The essay was not so much about him, but about the shooting and how I had worked to rebuild my life into something beautiful in the years that followed.

It was a nice respite from the fear, to bask in the kind messages and emails and comments I received in return. Maybe this is the whole point, I thought. Finding the beauty in something really ugly.

I felt optimistic about the situation even two days later, as I sat in a Vancouver convention center preparing to go onstage to discuss my tips for finding valuable things at thrift stores.

The “ping” on my cell phone alerted me to a message from my cousin. In it were two screenshots of a news article: Calhoun Man Suspected in Dalton Stabbing.

It was about a man who went to the store where his ex-girlfriend worked and stabbed her in full view of the customers. He then fled on foot and stabbed himself while police officers surrounded him.

It was about my father.

The woman he stabbed survived, following intensive surgeries. We’ve even been in brief contact on social media, bound as we are now by the invisible string of victimhood.

He survived, too, and was charged with aggravated assault, possession of a knife during the commission of a felony and, finally, attempted murder. Being that the stabbing occurred in the middle of the day and in a public place, it was caught on tape, and with multiple witnesses.

It’s a strange feeling, to know safety after recent months of being not-quite-sure where he was. Not-quite-sure if he’d reappear. Not-quite-sure what he meant by “I have no desire or intent” to move on.

While he's in custody, he can’t hurt anyone. But, of course, we’re all still hurting.

I’ve long been plagued by the thought that there’s an alternate reality — one in which he didn’t do it at all, or one in which he did it later, when I was old enough to remember. Or one in which he did it to me instead.

There is now a possibility that I may see my father outside a grainy mugshot — this time, in a courtroom, to deliver a statement before the judge who would determine his sentence, should he be found guilty.

I’m at once paralyzed by fear and excited at the possibility of justice, pondering what exactly I could say about the man who took so much from me.

I could explain how I take care of my mom now. How she has a standing doctor’s appointment once a month (plus three or four others, littered throughout the weeks). How I tell time by when she gets her pills: 8 AM, 3 PM, and 9 PM — something for pain, for nerve damage, for seizures, for depression.

Or how, as a little girl, I told my friends my mom could do a great trick — remove her right eye — and then I’d ask her to take out her prosthetic eye from its socket, while the other small children screamed in horror. Some cried.

I could explain how I see her every day but I don’t really know my mom — the person she is without the brain damage and the medications and the memory loss. How I’ve spent a lifetime trying to reconstruct a woman I can’t fully grasp.

And I could explain how I’ve never even spoken to my dad. Never so much as blinked in his direction, or breathed the same air. But I do know him. 

I know that he isn’t sorry. 

I know that his violence won’t abate. 

I know that he’d do it again. 

I know that he deserves a room with no windows, and no light at all.

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Addendum

Here is what I read to the judge and the courtroom on Sep. 23, 2025:

Honorable Judge,

My name is Virginia Chamlee and I am Monica’s daughter. In many ways, I am also her mother.

I was born on January 29, 1985. Six weeks later, the defendant shot my mother in the head.

The defendant did not kill my mother, but he still took her from me. The traumatic brain injury she endured made her a different person — one who could not take care of me. Instead, I now take care of her. My life revolves around being her caretaker.

Growing up, my mom was more like my sister — because of the shooting, my grandmother had to raise me and also raise my mom, for a second time.

I was very lucky. My grandmother was my hero. She did the work of a father and a mother and so much more — she pushed me to follow my dreams, to pursue an education, and she quietly ensured I was as safe as possible, even building a room in our home that had no windows and a row of panic buttons on the wall, just in case the defendant ever tried to find us.

When my grandmother died in a car accident five years ago, my world turned upside down in many ways, as I became my mother’s caretaker.

Taking care of someone with a traumatic brain injury is incredibly challenging. Every decision I make now revolves around her doctor appointments, her surgeries, how she’s feeling on any given day. She cannot drive, so I take her to every doctor’s appointment. I administer all of her medications.

And despite the significant impact he had on my life, I did not think of the defendant much at all throughout my life. Until last year, that is, when he began sending my mom messages on Facebook.

In dozens of messages, the man who shot my mother in the head 40 years prior wrote things like:

“Are you secretly happy and excited to hear from me?”

and

“I really believe you have loved me since 1983.”

In one, he wrote, “You moved on … I can’t and honestly I have no desire or intent to.”

My mom never responded to a single message. In fact, she never read any of them. I read them all.

Reading those messages allowed me to understand the fear that gripped my grandmother when she built the windowless room in our house all those years ago. Reading them offered a glimpse of a man who had not changed. A glimpse of a man who could not and can not control his worst impulses. A man who tries to punish women who reject him.

My mom rejected him and he shot her. [Victim #2] rejected him and he stabbed her.

I was not shot nor stabbed by the defendant, but I did not get out unscathed. What he took from me — my childhood, my mom, the recent years I have spent as a caregiver — cannot ever be replaced.

While my friends change their children’s diapers, I help change the batteries in my mom’s neurostimulator device. While they feed their babies, I navigate the minefield of my mother’s crippling pain and the myriad health issues that have come as a result of her injuries. She has one eye and no teeth. She no longer has full use of her bladder. She suffers from seizures — one that was so bad she fell and broke her wrist in two places. It was me who took her to the hospital. Me who took her to the twice-weekly physical therapy appointments, which came on top of all the other myriad appointments.

My mother and I are both stuck in a holding pattern — she, by her physical disabilities, and me, by the knowledge that I can never fix her, no matter how hard I try.

What the defendant did when he shot my mom did not end in March 1985 and it will not end today. The surgeries, the medications, the side effects … This will be how my mother spends the rest of her entire life. It has also cast a shadow over mine.

My mother has now lived 40 years as this version of herself. She only got 20 as the woman she was before and it is a tragedy that I will never know that person.

There are multiple victims in the courtroom today and most of them have two lives: their lives before the defendant, and their lives after. Unfortunately, all I have ever known is the after. The defendant robbed me of my mother, my trust in others, and my ability to live a normal life.

For more of the personal stuff, head to these two posts from the archives:

I’ll leave you with this…

Hey gang and Happy Friday,

I’m on the road again this weekend, going to Savannah for a friend’s birthday weekend. I’ve been to Savannah a lot over the years (it is such a close drive to me!) so I have a lot on my agenda and can hopefully create a nice little city guide when I get back! Any recs I might not know about? Send ‘em my way!

As for today’s letter, I got lots of questions about my Nashville outfits, so sharing them here as best I can (I wore a lot of secondhand!)

xx,

VC

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Travel Day

• Camouflage pants

• Sustainable sneakers (these are light as a feather it literally feels like you are wearing slippers)

• Padded silver tote for my laptops

• Croc tote for everything else

• White tee

• Pullover

• Paracord necklace

• Baseball hat

• Abalone shell phone case

In-studio television interview:

• Vintage Miu Miu dress (via 1stDibs)

• Old Christian Louboutin heels (via a Saks outlet probably more than a decade ago)

• Abalone shell phone case

Day 1 of the Home Show:

• Pullover

• Shorts that look like a skirt

• Old Celine espadrilles (purchased at an outlet many years ago)

• Abalone shell phone case

Day 2 of the Home Show:

• Camouflage pants

• Sustainable sneakers

• Croc tote

• Old Alexander McQueen top (purchased secondhand at a shop in Atlanta)

• Abalone shell phone case

Day 3 of the Home Show/NewsNation remote interview:

• Old dress by The Vampire’s Wife (purchased secondhand at a shop in Atlanta)

• Sustainable sneakers

• Frilly socks

• Croc tote

• Old Celine sunglasses

• Abalone shell phone case

Travel day:

• Prabal Gurung cashmere dress (bought during the World’s Longest Yard Sale!)

• Cashmere sweater around waist

• Sustainable sneakers

• Croc tote

• Abalone shell phone case

Some other things that made my trip (and all trips) great:

• These eye patches (I have a ton of these; they are less than $12 for a three-pack. I pack them for every trip, and put them in the mini fridge before I use them.)

• My cheerful Chloe jelly sandals (very comfortable and well-made)

• My suitcase

• These melatonin sleep strips, which put me to bed within 20 minutes

In case you missed it: I published my complete January-to-December guide to the yard sales, flea markets and secondhand-shopping events worth planning a trip around. Paid subscribers can also access the saveable calendar.

I spoke to NewsNation last week about the booming secondhand market. Take a look!

If I tell everyone how I do it, they will realize I am not, in fact, doing it all, I thought. They will realize I am actually stretched so thin that I am on the verge of snapping in half.

But then, a second thought: Maybe no one is really doing it all. Maybe we are all stretched impossibly thin, and if I explain what my day-to-day is actually like, it could help pull back the curtain on the whole Instagram-versus-reality thing.

Of course, there were also the third, fourth and fifth thoughts: No one cares about any of this. Will I still be making Instagram Reels into my retirement years? Is this the meaning of life? But I generally tamp those down for later. (Later never comes.)

To understand what “all” entails: I have a 9-to-5. I am a staff writer for People magazine, and have been for six years. I also work as a “content creator,” which entails writing this Substack, filming Instagram Reels and Facebook videos, posting to TikTok when I remember, debating whether to start a YouTube channel, and (more recently) reaching out to brands for partnerships.

Then, there is my “book stuff”: My first book, Big Thrift Energy, is now in its fourth printing, and I am paid to speak at trade shows around North America about it. And I have another book coming out in 2027, which I have spent the past six months writing and having photographed.

A recent five-day trip to Nashville required me to do nearly all of those jobs at once: work my regular People shifts, appear on local television, speak at the Nashville Home Show, create social media content, and ultimately extend the trip for a five-minute appearance on NewsNation.

So, in the interest of answering the above reader question honestly, here is what those days actually looked like, along with how I save time when I can.

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I am someone who was raised on InStyle magazine and would absolutely pore over runway show imagery as a child and young adult. But in recent years I just haven’t found as much inspiration from new collections.

But oh baby did that shift when I saw the images out of the Polo Ralph Lauren 2026 Fall Ready-to-Wear Collection several months ago.

The styling is truly outside the box, pairing tried-and-true Ralph Lauren elements (fringe, polo shirts, Western accents) in exciting and inspired ways.

Fringed jackets are tied around the waist, with cummerbunds and concha belts over the top. There’s tuxedo shirting (and tuxedo jackets!) dressed down with leather. There are gloves! (so many gloves) under rugby-style shirts (which themselves are layered on top of turtlenecks).

This sporty-meets-Western look is also on display in Nili Lotan’s latest collection, which pairs a lot of oversized belt buckles and denim with more tailored pieces, like leather blazers.

Of course, many of these collections (and clothing in general, tbh) are wildly expensive.

Fortunately for us: so many of the elements therein are thriftable!

Let’s break it down.

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If you tell me there’s a 100+ mile stretch of road where people have set out their old junk, I will be first in the car — protein bars and jerky sticks in tow, a killer playlist already blasting.

That’s why I set out to build a full calendar of the best flea markets, yard sales, and secondhand-shopping events in the US worth planning an entire trip around —more than 20 of them, and growing.

Most are under-the-radar sales you’ve probably never heard of, overflowing with affordable finds. But I also included the more polished, famous-for-a-reason events (Round Top, Brimfield) — still absolutely worth the trip, even if you’re just “window” shopping.

If you’re new here: there’s a high chance you found this newsletter because of my trips to The World’s Longest Yard Sale — I’ve been writing about it for more than three years. Turns out, it’s not the only one of its kind. In fact, there are sales on this list that stretch more than 800 miles (which, ironically, means there are sales longer than the “world’s longest”).

In other words, it’s time to take a road trip.

I’ll drive.

Everything below is the actual list — 20+ sales with dates, mileage, and the kind of insider tips you won't find on a random Google search. New events will be added as I track them down, so this calendar will only get better with time.

JANUARY

Round Top Winter Show — Round Top, Texas

When: January
Where: Round Top, Texas
More information: Round Top Antiques Fair

Round Top is Burning Man for vintage-lovers, in that this is where both true antiques aficionados and wealthy women cosplaying as such mix and mingle. It’s also a days-long stretch in which an entire town turns into an over-the-top market. There are fields, which have better deals, but the bulk of the show takes place indoors, or under covered tents.

The Original Round Top Antiques Fair dates to 1968, but Round Top today is bigger than one single show. Very high-end (read: indoor and high-priced) antique venues have spread along Highway 237 and throughout the surrounding countryside, with everything from European furniture to architectural salvage, and vintage clothing.

Most people associate Round Top with its hugely popular spring and fall shows, but there is also a much smaller winter edition in January. I’ve been to both the winter show and fall show! The winter show does not offer the full Round Top experience (far fewer vendors), but the weather (and the crowds!) are better.

Renninger’s Antique Extravaganza — Mount Dora, Florida

When: January
Where: Mount Dora, Florida
More information: Renninger’s

The show I’ve gone to most on the list. I have visited Renninger’s probably at least a dozen times for the three-times-a-year Extravaganza. I fear word has gotten out (I am probably partially to blame for that!), but I still find good stuff.

Renninger’s is a large antique center and flea market near Orlando, but three times a year it expands for the Extravaganza, bringing dozens of additional dealers into an outdoor show field.

As a bonus: Mount Dora is so cute and makes for such a great little weekend trip.

FEBRUARY

Renninger’s Antique Extravaganza — Mount Dora, Florida

When: February
Where: Mount Dora, Florida
More information: Renninger’s

Round two.

Renninger’s holds another Antique Extravaganza in February. So if you miss it in January, just go to the February event.

MARCH

Peaches to the Beaches — Georgia

When: Second Friday and Saturday in March
Where: Along Highway 341 across Georgia
How long: 200+ miles
More information: Peaches to the Beaches

This is Georgia’s longest yard sale, and it runs through a litany of small towns such as Fort Valley, Perry, Hawkinsville, Eastman, Hazlehurst, Baxley, Jesup, and Brunswick. Official vendor sites (those with large groupings of dealers) are mixed in with individual sellers along the route, and you’ll find everything from antiques to the sort of authentic garage-sale miscellany that makes these events so great.

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Also: I asked if you all would be interested in a robust guide to selling vintage, so look for that in the coming weeks. Trying to make it as detailed as possible; drop a comment here if you have specific questions about starting a side hustle selling vintage (which I did about a decade ago and have learned a lot about in the years since!)

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Below, rounding up some recent faves: like the sleep strips that I’ve been using every single night before bed and the best vintage belt I have ever seen.

xx,

VC

Some vintage finds I’m obsessed with at the moment:

• 1960s Italian armchairs

• Florence Knoll bench

• Christian Lacroix necklace (trigger warning for the price on this guy, would DIE to find something similar at an estate sale)

• YSL slingbacks (these are actually my size and have been sitting in my cart for a month)

By now, you’ve probably seen the J.Crew rollneck sweaters, as they are all over the internet! I personally love mine. It’s cropped but hits at just the right spot on my jeans (I find that sweaters are so hard to style if they are too long, as they get bulky over the waistband of pants or a belt.) Seen here with a vintage belt buckle from the World’s Longest Yard Sale.

I am fortunate to receive PR packages from time to time, but this week was a new level of gifting, unlocked: my dog, Holly, was sent human-grade dog food and treats by a wonderful company called Maev. They are not paying me to post this, but they did send the treats and a bag of food, so I am very appreciative. But not as appreciative as Holly. One of her very favorite things to do is sniff new packages. Any new package I get, she inspects first. So when she realized what was inside this one, she nearly did a somersault. She has given the product her full endorsement and the PR has really gone to her head. Ugh. Influencers.

I was gonna save this vintage bracelet for my next under-$100 roundup but I worry it might get snagged before then. I got a very similar piece at the yard sale a few weeks ago. It’s made of tiny little blown-glass fruits, and it is perfect (this one is $20!!!)

These sleep strips are my new ride-or-die. You place one on your tongue and it dissolves in minutes, and you are lights out in 20. Each comes individually wrapped (the packaging, as you can see, is very suggestive) so they are ideal for travel and would even fit in your wallet.

This 1980s Italian chair is everything.

I just ordered this tote with matching phone holder for the beach. It hasn’t arrived yet, so I’ll share when it does, but I appreciate that it’s foldable, so I can take it with me on trips, and I like that it protects from sand (this is one of my biggest gripes with most totes…once they get sand in them, it is SO hard to get it out). This one you can just rinse.

This handmade vintage belt showed up as an ad on Instagram for me and I don’t think I’ve ever clicked on anything so fast. Holy, Moly.

This newsletter may contain affiliate links, which means if you purchase something, I may get a small commission from that sale with no additional cost to you. I use affiliate links whenever I can, both to track what people are clicking on and — yes — as a way to make money from this newsletter, which I work very hard on!

This weekend, I got treated to something a little bit more exciting: a weekend at the Jekyll Island Club Resort to attend the Braderie South antiques show.

The Club opened in 1888 as a private winter retreat for families like the Rockefellers, Morgans (of J.P. Morgan), and Vanderbilts. Some built vacation homes (rather generously called “cottages”) still on the property today. The Clubhouse now serves as the hotel and the cottages are open to guests, too. It’s an area with lots of history and therefore a fitting place to spend a weekend looking at antiques.

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For me, no drive up to the Golden Isles is complete without a stop at a few of my favorite haunts, like Southern Soul BBQ and the Tibi boutique in St. Simon’s. I treated myself to a pair of shorts in the most incredible mustard color and the camo pants I’ve had my eye on for months now. The Tibi St. Simon’s boutique is a true gem, with the most incredible service. The stylists on staff here are incredibly kind, stylish, and well-versed in the Tibi ethos (if you know Tibi, you know that you could build an entire wardrobe here).

Following an absolute monster of a storm, the clouds parted and I then made it to the Jekyll Island Club, where I was kindly hosted to two nights during the run of the show. And what a show — unlike a lot of antiques shows, this one paired makers of new objects with vendors of old things. And these makers weren't the kind selling crafty quilts and oven mitts, but rather creating beautiful, unique takes on objects with history.

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I said yes, of course, because I love you (and because, selfishly, I wanted to see if any of these places are near me or have been checked off my list) — the answer to both is yes.

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Yelp’s latest search data reveals a clear shift in how people are shopping secondhand (and, probably, offers a somewhat grim look at the economy): shoppers are not just interested in finding vintage pieces, but also in making them last.

Searches for tailoring are up 111%, bag restoration is up 77%, refinishing services are up 82%, and vintage clock repair has spiked 167%. The data points to a growing investment in restoring and caring for inherited or thrifted finds across clothing and housewares.

That means people are viewing vintage pieces as long-term commitments, an ethos that I fully support. It’s part of the reason I am so passionate about finding “luxury” or “designer” things at the thrift store. It’s not so much about the designer of it all, but about the quality. Quality lasts. Buy a great pair of 1980s Donna Karan trousers, search on Yelp where to get them tailored, and you’ve got a pant that will last you a lifetime.

Same thing goes for furniture — just Yelp where to get it reupholstered or repaired, and it can be with you for the long haul.

Alongside these more statistical findings, Yelp is releasing a list of the Most Saved Secondhand Shops across the U.S., a guide to some of the best places for finding cool stuff around the country.

I’m guessing that’s what you’re here for.

Methodology: This is an all-time list of the most saved secondhand shops in the U.S., according to Yelp, which identified businesses in the Thrift, Flea Market, Antiques, and Used, Vintage & Consignment categories, then ranked those spots using a number of factors, including total number of saves and ratings of reviews. Yelp included up to five businesses per state for geographic diversity, and analyzed searches on the platform from July 2026 to July 2025.

1. Melrose Trading Post — Los Angeles, California

2. L Train Vintage — New York, New York

3. Urban Jungle — Brooklyn, New York

4. Rose Bowl Flea Market — Pasadena, California

5. Uncommon Objects — Austin, Texas

6. Village Merchants — Portland, Oregon

7. Knee Deep Vintage — Chicago, Illinois

8. Cure Thrift Shop — New York, New York

9. Bridge Thrift — Los Angeles, California

10. Tokio 7 — New York, New York

11. Community Thrift Store — San Francisco, California

12. 10 ft Single by Stella Dallas — Brooklyn, New York

13. King Richard’s Antique Center — Whittier, California

14. Room Service Vintage — Austin, Texas

15. The Garment District — Cambridge, Massachusetts

16. Kokorokoko — Chicago, Illinois

17. Cambridge Antique Market — Cambridge, Massachusetts

18. The Cottage Shop — Houston, Texas

19. Blue Velvet — Austin, Texas

20. Fia’s Fabulous Finds — Washington, D.C.

21. Monkies Vintage and Thrift — Austin, Texas

22. Hip Zipper Vintage — Nashville, Tennessee

23. Shangri-La Vintage — Chicago, Illinois

24. Starland Vintage & Unusual — Nashville, Tennessee

25. Boomerangs — Cambridge, Massachusetts

The full Yelp list is here.

Have you been to any of these spots and if so, which was your favorite? Uncommon Objects in Austin is one of the best vintage shops I’ve ever been to in my life and I think of it often.

PS. This weekend, I’m heading to the Braderie South antique show in Jekyll Island. I’ll recap the trip in Sunday’s letter, along with all the cool vintage I find.

xx,

VC

FROM THE ARCHIVES

The film starred Dolly Parton as, well, one of the titular characters and Burt Reynolds as a sheriff fighting to keep his favorite brothel open. It is campy and wonderful and as a five-year-old I didn’t understand what, exactly, the women did in the aforementioned whorehouse, but I knew that I liked the music and adored the woman with the big blonde hair.

If you’ve read this newsletter long enough you know my backstory: My mom was shot in the head when I was six weeks old, in the small town in North Georgia where I was born. My mom survived but suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury, and my grandmother raised me as her own from that point on, moving the three of us to Florida when I was a few years old.

Maybe it’s because she had already raised kids once and was exhausted from life, or maybe it’s because she was very progressive, but my grandmother really had no rules regarding the content I consumed.

I was treated, essentially, like a small adult. Art and nudity and cursing weren’t things to hide; they were part of life and worthy of discussion (I am forever grateful for being raised this way and will say, as an aside: I was a very good girl.)

Following her brain injury and before the introduction of powerful pain medications, my mom would spend her days watching Turner Classic movies and listening to country music in her bedroom.

My mom was my introduction to Dolly Parton. And since my grandmother did not care what I watched, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas became my favorite movie. And Dolly, the biggest star in my sky.

A prolific (and brilliant) songwriter, Dolly is responsible for some of the best songs ever recorded: “I Will Always Love You,” “Jolene,” “Here You Come Again” (a personal favorite). She was a fantastic actress, having appeared in Steel Magnolias, 9 to 5, Rhinestone, and a litany of smaller, made-for-tv movies and specials.

Dolly is also famous, of course, for her intensely specific aesthetic. A little bit too much, she was, with her big hair and nipped-in-waist that seemed too diminutive to support the weight of her eyelashes and nails, let alone boobs.

Born to a dirt poor family in rural Tennessee, Dolly famously came to her point of view early on in life, taking her style cues from what she called the “town trash.” She was, outwardly, a caricature of a woman, fully embracing everything it meant to be “tacky.”

But oh, she was fierce.

One of the best demonstrations of this came during a now-famous interview with Barbara Walters in 1977. Walters asked questions that, in hindsight, are breathtakingly condescending — implying that Dolly was a “hillbilly,” and pointing out that Dolly didn’t have to wear the wigs or the exaggerated clothes. Walters wondered, out loud, whether the spectacle of her looks made Dolly into some sort of a joke.

Throughout the questions, Dolly remained nonplussed, dismantling each with such quickness and confidence that the entire premise — that a woman with big boobs and long nails couldn’t also be smart or artistic — began to collapse.

And when Walters suggested that she didn’t have to look the way she did, Dolly agreed, saying she looked the way she did because it was a “choice.”

“I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable,” she told her.

The hair and the rhinestones and the epic proportions of her body were enough to throw any interviewer off their game, but Dolly was always several steps ahead anyway. She could disarm anyone with a joke (just look at any clip of her on a talk show and you’ll find yourself shocked at the speed with which she delivers a punchline).

For someone who gave so much of herself to the public, Dolly also knew what to keep to herself. Her nearly 60-year marriage to Carl Dean remained largely out of the public eye, and she spoke openly about not having children without ever treating her life as incomplete.

A legend now, for sure. But in the 1970s, ‘80’s, and even beyond, many held Dolly up as an example of bad taste.

I have written before about how what the majority of people consider to be “good taste” is really not “good,” at all, but simply palatable. It’s easy to absorb. Asks nothing of the rest of us.

But that’s not exactly compelling.

Nor is it thoughtful.

“It costs a lot to look this cheap,” Dolly once famously said, and indeed, the time and effort she put into her aesthetic is incredible. A true artist, transforming into a walking, talking, singing work of art. She famously wore wigs and bedazzled clothing (much of it with long sleeves, to hide the many tattoos she had all over her body).

As I wrote in my essay about The Ugly-Chic Theory, I have long sought beauty in the slightly off-putting:

Design that is too perfect — too symmetrical, too balanced, too pristine — feels unlivable. Slightly off kilter or, dare I say, slightly tacky, feels more fresh and interesting (almost like spotting Dolly Parton in a sea of Stepford wives).

Having come from a town just a stone’s throw from Tennessee, where Dolly is from, I grew up around women who sound exactly like her. Women who also have peroxide blonde hair and never miss a nail appointment (you may have noticed, I don’t miss one, either).

But there’s something else about that part of the country that I think many people don’t see: there is an artistry and a weirdness to the American South unlike anything else. So many musicians and folk artists hail from North Georgia and Tennessee and many of them, like Dolly, came from nothing. Still, they built fantastical, larger-than-life worlds — as a choice, without caring what other people thought about their aesthetic point of view (Howard Finster, a Baptist preacher-turned-folk-artist, created an over-the-top home and studio that you can still visit in North Georgia, very near the town I was born in. It is what most would call tacky and it is absolutely wonderful).

There is power to refusing the conventions of “good” taste and embracing tacky. There is power in being too much and never toning it down, even if society wants you to.

It is rare for the loss of a celebrity to unite so many, but Dolly herself was rare.

There is this strange notion in our modern age of social media that authenticity requires crafting the most stripped-down version of oneself. I’ve noticed it in the recent discourse around manicures, in which “successful” women influencers talk about how they no longer get their nails done, because they simply don’t have the time. But is going bare-nailed or bare-faced authenticity or is it artifice? Dolly was likely busier than us all — more successful, certainly. Yet she carved out time for the nails, and the hair, and the makeup, because that was all a part of who she was. That was as much her artistry as the music itself.

Dolly was, and is, proof that femininity and fierceness are not opposing forces. That you can be clever and talented, and a push-up bra won’t take away from that.

Her big hair and her thick accent feel familiar to me, like the women I remember holding me when I was a little girl and would visit Georgia. Incredibly independent but Southern and in some ways traditionally feminine to the core. My grandmother, for instance, implored me never to tie my worth to a man, and only dated one man during my lifetime (she broke up with him when he proposed). But you better believe she was first in line at the Lancôme counter when they debuted a new gift with purchase and, like Dolly, never treated femininity as something she had to overcome in order to be taken seriously.

I love a woman who doesn’t tone herself down in order to justify her intelligence, a woman who knows that looking like a man’s fantasy doesn’t require behaving like one.

It might seem strange to wax poetic about a musician in a newsletter devoted to design, but Dolly’s aesthetic ethos has always been inspirational to me. I love the fancy and luxe, but I am obsessed with the weird. I have always had a tacky streak in me, and with her as a muse, it feels like that can be celebrated.

I love the celebration of beauty – whatever that means to each of us, as individuals. I love that some people go to the Gagosian for a $500,000 painting and some people buy art on a cruise ship; I love that both of those people get the same amount of joy from the thing.

Isn’t it wonderful to live in a world where some people are tall and some are short? Where some people wear no makeup and others wear boatloads of it? Where neutral coincide with colors and “bad taste” sometimes gets as much as attention as what’s considered “good”?

Isn’t it wonderful that we all got to live in a world with Dolly Parton?

• J. Crew’s new rollnecks are out and they are wonderful. Full disclosure: the brand sent me one in advance of their big campaign with Emma Chamberlain but the fit is so great and I love all the colors. I went with a striped one but the baby pink is pretty great.

• Ruggable has a new line of Halloween rugs and doormats which are a really nide way to inject Mine is arriving today so I’ll share it in Friday’s letter but it’s making me pretty darn excited for fall.

• Are you guys watching Monsters of God? I’m obsessed. It’s Tiger King 2.0, except a little more intense. But everyone involved in this HBO docuseries about the reptile trade is a character.

A lot of economic research right now can help us deduce what’s going to show up at thrift stores and estate sales in the coming years. And one of the biggest things we’re going to see in the secondhand market is art.

Deloitte's Art and Finance Report estimates that some $992 billion in art and collectibles will pass from older generations to younger ones over the ten years. Economists call this the Great Wealth Transfer: the movement of money, property, and other assets (i.e. stuff) from aging Baby Boomers to the Gen X and Millennials inheriting their things.

The issue for Boomers is that many of their own kids don’t want their art.

Gen X and Millennials often have less wall real estate to fill (i.e., smaller homes and less storage), and many have different tastes than their parents. And most of them are just overwhelmed by the thought of being saddled with decades’ worth of stuff.

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I myself have been there: the day my grandmother died, I vowed I would not be getting rid of anything. Two weeks later, we had hosted multiple yard sales and had a dumpster in the driveway.

A lot of my grandmother’s stuff wound up being donated or sold for less than it was worth only because we had to get rid of it. I believe we will see similar stories in the coming years.

Some of these collections will, of course, be handled by estate sale companies and auction houses. But a lot will simply be donated or sold at yard sales and on Facebook Marketplace. Even at estate sales, some of it will wind up being priced for less than what it is worth.

Of course, not all of this art will be wildly valuable, but that’s not even really the point here.

Stumbling across an Andy Warhol in your neighbor’s attic is the dream, but a more realistic opportunity will be discovering the work of regional artists, or original works dismissed by a thrift store as generic wall decor.

Keep reading for more on:

• the difference between an original lithograph, etching or screenprint and a reproduction

• tips to decipher signatures and edition numbers

• how to research unfamiliar artists

So, what should you look for when shopping secondhand art?

Look for a signature on the front but also: turn it over.

Read more